


Destiné à Faire: We'll Always Meet Here

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, M/M, POV John Watson, Requited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:57:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock Holmes makes a starling (or not-so-startling) deduction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destiné à Faire: We'll Always Meet Here

Sherlock Holmes has a speech. A brilliant speech. I can see it brewing behind his eyes, and I can see it because tiny traces of light, made solid by something neither of us can explain, are pouring out of the corners. 

He looks at me. I’m looking right back at him. I’ve put the newspaper down on the arm of this chair having taken the time to fold it, precisely, like something worth saving. Both of us know he is about to open his mouth and both of us know that what will come flooding out is going to be extraordinary, so extraordinary it will coat every particle of air in the living room in vanilla and ozone. 

His lips part and something in a hidden corner of my brain makes the movement slow down to such an extent that it’s like my heart beats over three hundred and twenty times in two whole seconds. I can feel his perfunctory intake of breath and it’s like I can feel it on my skin. We are about to begin. 

“John,”

“Yes?” It’s sudden, hidden behind my (rather convincing) facade of ignorance. Like he surprised me. Like I wasn’t expecting his direct address. 

“Recently, I’ve been thinking,”

“Well there’s a surprise.”

He glares at me. His irises are cutting into my thoughts like the impossible colours of them are butter knives. Apparently, this is serious. I don’t say anything else.

“Recently, I’ve been thinking,” He begins again. “about myself.”

His back should be ramrod straight with the posture he insists on maintaining but in this moment I notice it’s more curved than I realised, more elegant. Flourished like a dramatic letter ‘S’ in black ink. He’s pacing, his hands flitting from in front of his face to the small of his back to his sides to brush the wallpaper to touch at his mouth. I can’t keep up. He’s pretending this is some commonplace deduction; it clearly isn’t.

“Which of course, is usually considered a fairly dangerous pastime. For me. Especially for me. I am not comfortable with reaching inside my head with my own fist and pulling out all the wires just to see exactly how I tick. But recently, I’ve found it’s a necessity. Because I am confused. I don’t get confused.”

The early afternoon hum on the pavement below us gets carried upwards on the daylight, like how cobwebs somehow - sometimes - carry noises if you close your eyes hard enough. It makes him look very vulnerable.

“I have become increasingly-- that is to say, something within my subconscious - something, at least, I thought was in my subconscious until recently, or if not that, completely nonexistent - has been plaguing me. Plaguing my conscious self. And so, I’ve found myself become increasingly distracted by. Well. Myself.”

A swift flick out of the corner of his eye, but I know he sees me. Sees my blank face, sees me seeing him as one might see rain pelting sideways away from the ocean, or perhaps a person completely inverting themselves while growing younger rather than aging. It’s like watching something destroy themselves in front of you and not knowing how, if not to fix things, to at least make the destruction stop.

“I, uh. I’m not the most natural being at- this. I should probably make myself clear: it’s you. You’re distracting me, hindering my work. No, no, don’t apologise. You’re doing nothing different.”

I swallow.

“It’s just that, recently, I’ve been paying more attention to the footprints your wet feet leave on the bathmat after you get out of the shower or to the colour of your hair under artificial lighting compared to it under that of the morning sunlight. Or that, that right there,” He waves his right hand towards the vicinity of my face. “When you’re confused your eyebrows crease, just like that.”

I was right, I think with a muted air of triumph. This wasn’t an ordinary deduction. 

“You. What I’m trying to articulate is that. That.”

He pauses, his eyes full and wild, like he’s drowning in things he’s already said, drowning in things he doesn’t know how to say. He glances towards me desperately like I should want to interrupt. I let him talk. One inhale. Two.

“You’re different. You’ve always been different and I’ve known that, but somehow, for some inexplicable reason, some time around last november I woke up to this fact.”

It is july.

“So, somehow - and it quite frankly scares me that I don’t know exactly why - it always leads back to. You. You’re the most different person I’ve ever met and thus, considering this revelation, I feel it is probably only just of me to tell you that, as of this exact moment, I am exquisitely, deliriously, splendidly and moreover, divinely in love with you.”

Nobody moves. The clock on the mantlepiece makes almost drunken noises and the only sound is clear but muffled slightly through the glass: the sound of London, our city, the sound of traffic and of life so vibrant it chokes me and of people. People buying last minute pints of milk on their way home; people 17,000 miles apart talking and laughing; people crying; people falling in love.

I stand and it’s as if I’m underwater. I was right (the room is coated in vanilla and ozone) but I’ve never been more afraid. I walk towards him. A few steps. Miles. He still hasn’t looked at me. I can hear myself swallow in the stillness between us.

Without touching him, without touching him at all I whisper something into the side of his neck before stepping back and force our eyes to meet. For some reason, this moment is so much more monumental. So first our eyes and then my palms meet his shoulder blades, his spine. I can’t help but hold him - powerful and unstoppable and deadly him - as if he might shatter into forty thousand pieces at any moment. 

Then our mouths meet. I’m craning my neck and it’s too wet at first and we’re both uncomfortable but it doesn’t matter. Here, he says more than he could ever say with his vocabulary. I’m unsure how long we stand there for, nearly motionless and pressed together like we wanted to drown, like softened and finespun dancers in the evening light.

(with the perpetuity of my everything, yes; me too, yes)


End file.
